In Africanism, particularly African spirituality, we have a belief that our ancestors are with us. They breathe within us and of course they don’t breathe the same oxygen as we do, but the way we live our day to day life, our ancestors live that way too. At times when we do bad things they also get affected, sometimes they decide to leave us, just to teach us a lesson.

Ancestors don’t want to be associated with people who are doing bad things, it is the same like how human beings always distance themselves or cut off people that are doing bad things. As human beings, we also don’t want to be associated with those kinds of people.

So as followers of African spirituality we don’t just call any ancestor, we call those that we trust. The question will pop and say, “How do you trust them, because maybe you don’t physically know them?” That is a good question but we ask upon all the ancestors that were doing great things while they were still living in the physical world. Those who were doing what the Creator wanted from them. We are talking about the ancestors that were not perfect because there’s no one who will ever be, but the Creator was happy with their ways of life. So they ended up going to the good spiritual dimension.

We don’t call the ones that were doing bad things. Those ones ended up at the evil spiritual dimension, and they will continue to live and work through their descendants. They will be an influence on their descendants.

Spiritual matters are not easily understandable, that is why one should be willing to listen. Our ancestors keep on communicating with us through dreams and visions, so for you to understand them you should be a great listener.

We should stop being so ignorant that we think there are no ancestors in Africa. In each and every generation there will be an ancestor, either good or bad, you just choose which one you want in your life.

In conclusion, our ancestors are going to be forever with us. They will never vanish because we don’t honour them. They don’t protect you because you believe they exist, they protect you because they know it is their duty to protect you. It is possible that they let bad things to happen to you because there is something that they want you to do, and you are not doing it. It could be a ritual. Let us research and be willing to learn. Let us explore life.

Tell us: What do you think of this essay on African spirituality?